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Monday, 24 November 2014

Hazelnut Wreath Ornament Tutorial

I am obsessed with rustic Christmas decor this year (and probably will be next year too). I have been trying to stock up on tree ornaments, but those darn things are expensive! So, I decided to make these little hazelnut wreaths for our tree.

Let me start by saying that nuts with the shell are way more expensive than I anticipated. Who knew? But from a $25 bag of mixed nuts from bulk barn (which contained hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds) I made 36 ornaments. Way more than I thought I would be able to make. So all in all I call this project a success.

Also, I think this would be a fun project to do with kids because their little fingers would be good at arranging the wreaths while you (the adult) works the hot glue gun.

So lets get to the fun stuff!

What you will need:

-Hazelnuts with their shell (the amount is a little tricky because mine were mixed nuts [I bought around 3 lbs] and I picked out the hazelnuts... but you use 7-8 nuts per ornament)

-Hot glue gun

-Canning jar lid (I used one from a narrow mouth quart jar - I found the wide mouth to be too big)

-Clear aerosol lacquer to seal

-Raffia, Ribbon, or Baker's Twine for bows (see this post for how I tied my bows)

-Ornament hooks for hanging

The Steps:

1. If you bought mixed nuts like me, separate the hazelnuts out into a bowl. Trust me, you will need to work quickly and won't have time to be rooting around for hazelnuts amongst the rest of nuts.

2. Place 7-8 (depending on size) hazelnuts in a ring in the canning jar lid.

3. This is the harder part. You need to put a dot of hot glue on one hazelnut, then quickly squish its neighbour onto it before the hot glue hardens. The upside, if you mess up it is easy to scrape off the hardened hot glue and try again. I found the best technique was to slide two hazelnuts apart with my left index finger and thumb, drop a dot of hot glue onto the side of one of them and then quickly slide them back together.

*at no point are you hot gluing the hazelnut to the jar lid. The lid is just to help make the "wreath" round

4. Trim off all the hot glue "strings" and let the wreath sit for a few minutes until the glue is fully hardened. I used two jar lids, so I would make one wreath then leave it sitting in the lid until I finished with my second wreath. By that time the first one was cooled.

Before trimming the hot glue "strings"

5. Lacquer both sides of the wreath. Make sure you pick up your lacquer and not a can of primer... Oops.

Woops

That's better

6. Last thing you need to do is add a bow to top off the wreath. I give a step-by-step on how to tie the perfect bow here, which also happens to be the perfect size for this project.

I would be shocked if I ever got through a project without some kind of minor set back! Haha. There is something about hazelnuts that just puts me in a Christmas mood (whether they are getting eaten or turned into something pretty).